Return to Gravity Falls
by ilcavaliere
Summary: The Pines twins return to Gravity Falls, where new adventures, and enemies, await them!


**Episode 1: Return to Gravity Falls**

_On the bus to Gravity Falls_

"Ohhh, I'm so excited, Dipper!" cried the zealous thirteen-year-old girl seated at the back of the bus. "We're finally going back!" Mabel began to list off her claims one finger at a time. "I'm going to see Grenda, and Candy, and Grunkle Stan, and Grunkle Ford..."

"Yes, yes," smiled the boy beside her. "It's finally summertime again. I can't wait to hear what sort of shenanigans Great Uncle Ford has put Grunkle Stan through the past year."

"Didn't they go sailing near the Arctic?" asked Mabel

"They did indeed," responded Dipper. "Fortunately they had just completed their journey enough for us to return around the same time!"

"Ahhh!" screamed Mabel. "Look, you can see the water tower! We're nearly there!" She was just barely bouncing in her seat from joy."

"Calm down," pestered Dipper, resting a hand on Mabel's shoulder. "This summer everything is going to be different."

"How so?" contemplated Mabel.

"Just think about it, Soos is now the head of the Mystery Shack, the town knows about the supernatural entities that reside therein - oh, and not to mention, the Northwests had to abandon their mansion."

"Oh, I'm putting that whole rivalry thing beside myself," spoke Mabel. "That was last year's problem, a problem for pre-teens. Now we're returning as teenagers - that's the real difference."

"You really think being one year older will make any real difference?"

"I'd bet Waddles' left paw on it." She held up the pig for the entire bus to witness.

"So what's your big plan for this summer? You going to try out the whole 'summer romance' thing again?" Dipper raised his hands and made some sarcastic air-quotes to demarcate the term.

"Actually, I don't think I will," responded Mabel. "I'm going to try and be more mature - maturabel." Mabel poked at her two cheeks.

"I think you're off to a rocky start there."

The bus slowed to easy stop, surrounded by nothing but the wilderness. Finally they had arrived.

"Final stop for... Gravity Falls," murmured the bus-driver, trying to remember the name of the flyby town.

"Beat you out the door!" Mabel stood up and ran for the bus door before it had even begun to open.

The two twins stepped out of the bus and looked at their gleeful greeters. Before them firstly was a tall, hunched man wearing an off-black suit with a matching bolo-tie. The twins almost didn't recognize him without his characteristic fez.

"Grunkle Stan!" They shouted in unison.

"Come here you two!" he responded, stretching his arms out for a hug. The two twins ran right up into his arms and squeezed him so tight he felt the air pass out of his lungs.

"Careful now," Stan commented, "I'm not as young as I used to be."

A foot away from their Grunkle Stan stood a man of equal look but carrying upon himself a heavy burden of intelligence behind the faded lenses of his glasses. He wore a professor's blazer with a red shirt underneath, no doubt hiding a weapon of some sort to battle the mysteries of the enigmatic town.

"Great Uncle Ford!" shouted Dipper. Mabel shouted at the same time, only to say "Grunkle" in lieu of Dipper's perseverance to use the full title.

"What have you two been up to all year?" he asked, inquisitive as ever.

"Oh, nothing special, psssh," Mabel said pressing her hand against Ford. "We want to hear about what _you've_ all been up to!"

"Well, that's a long story, allow us to fill you in on the way to the Mystery Shack."

Stan and Ford began to recount their adventures in the Artic. It all began a year ago when, in the ceremonious thirteenth birthday of the twins Ford had discovered a spot of paranormal activity located just south of the Arctic circle. On the nominally named Stan-o'-war II, the original mystery twins set out to find the source of the paranormal far from home. They arrived to the icy Arctic to find the spikes in paranormal activity to not be anything short of legitimate: one of the first creatures they encountered was the elusive Kraken, having come up to the surface for the first time in hundreds of years.

"I even got to punch it," interjected Stan

The Kraken turned out to be the harbinger of the remaining paranormal activity in the region, which followed the Kraken up to the surface of the ocean. Ford had even begun a fourth journal to catalogue the newer phenomena.

Dipper bounced at this mention: "A fourth journal!" He lunged at Ford. "You must let me read it!"

"In due time, in due time," remarked Ford.

The Stan-o'-War eventually made landfall on the Faroe Islands, where the two encountered what they believed to be an elven community deep into one of the forests. The elves eventually turned out to be a mirage created by an even more powerful creature that attempted to ensnare the two forever.

"I never really believed in elves in the first place," spoke Ford. "The stories of elves are too ambiguous. Are they tall? Are they short? Only thing anyone was ever able to agree upon was that they have long, pointy ears."

From the Faroe Islands, the two twins sailed onwards back into the Arctic, and found that their visit was preceded by an unfrozen series of extinct creatures. Stan fell ill to a strain of extinct flu for a week.

"Now the flu, that's something you _can't punch_," he muttered

"You must have pictures from your journey!" begged Dipper.

"Yes!" spoke Mabel. "We can turn it into a scrapbook!"

"We took quite a few actually, cataloguing as much as we could," spoke Ford. "It's all located in the laboratory beneath the shack."

After dealing with the flu, the Stan-o'-War made its landfall in Northern Russia, where the locals told stories of a gigantic bear that roamed the woods. In the freezing temperatures of Yakutsk, the twins hunted down the cavern where the bear supposedly lived, only to find that the stories were nothing but tall tales. The supposed 'gigantic bear' was merely a bear of normal size that seemed to have grown a taste for human flesh.

By this point in the tale the two pairs of twins arrived at the Mystery Shack, for once with the 'S' hanging on without laying on the ground.

"I can't wait to see Soos!" screamed Mabel.

Stan sighed. "We didn't even get to hear about their school year."

"Oh, trust me," spoke Dipper, "it's nowhere near as exciting as what you've told us."

"Soos!" cried out Mabel before running headfirst into the door. "Ouch..."

"Oh, hey little dudes," came a familiar voice.

The burly figure of soos stood over the frame of the door.

"Soos!" cried Dipper, "oh we've missed you!"

"Woah, fella." Soos put his hand to an arbitrary position aligned with Dipper's nose, and raised it above Dipper's head. "I think someone's grown."

"Yep! We've grown a full two inches each," remarked Mabel, stealing a tape measure from Soos's belt. "Look!"

"Well I'll be damned if it ain't true." Soos paused. "I can start using bad words in front of you guys now, right? Being teenagers and all that?"

"Yes you can!" screamed Mabel. "We're going to curse to much this summer!"

"Don't make me regret inviting you two back here," smirked Stan. "Now give us the details of your year."

The two twins sat down on the floor of the living room. Stan took the center seat as he always did, and Ford leaned against it to the side. Soos adjusted his fez and settled onto the floor with the twins.

Mabel began to recount the school year from the very beginning. First they arrived sadly to California, growing despondent over their feelings of longing for Gravity Falls, but quickly they began to resettle into the scheme of life for two Californian middle schoolers in their last year.

"And Dipper, you should've seen him," recounted Mabel, "he almost kissed a girl!"

"Mabel!" cried out Dipper. "I thought we were going to avoid this story."

"You know I can't do that," she responded. "So first we were at a school dance, and Dipper tried all that confidence stuff that you taught him, and actually danced with a girl!"

"Ooh," murmured Soos.

"Sounds like a tall-tale," spoke Stan.

"And just as they were about to kiss, the song changed and the mood was ruined! And also, he may have spilled some punch on her dress." Mabel looked like she was about to cry. "I will never forgive that DJ."

"Apart from such silly stores," continued Dipper, "the year went a little too 'normal' for my liking. How'd you even convince our parents to let us return here after what happened to the town?"

"Well, it was easy," smirked Stan. "I lied. To them, nothing out of the ordinary happened here over the summer! And you too loved every second of the ordinary!"

"I guess it's their fault for not watching the news," said Dipper. "Regardless, did Mabel tell you she failed an exam?"

"Bro-Bro!"

"Hey, you told my nearly-kissing-story, this is just classic revenge."

"Ah petty squabbles," spoke Stan, "remember when we had those, Ford?"

Ford just sighed and shook his head. "It's glad to have everyone back under one roof again."

"Can I see journal four now?" begged Dipper. "Please oh please oh please oh-"

"I don't see the harm, come along down to the basement," ushered Ford.

Dipper hurriedly ran down the steps hidden behind the defunct vending machine. Mabel remained upstairs to regale the remaining audience with tales of the school year.

"May I ask?" pondered Mabel, "where's Wendy?"

"She didn't come to work today," remarked Soos. "Which is not unsurprising, but I thought I told her that you two would be returning today."

"She's probably off with her friends doing teenager stuff, pssh."

Stan looked up to Soos. "Thanks again for letting us remain in the Mystery Shack for the summer. I never really got to offer proper thanks for that."

"STAN - THANKING SOMEONE?" Mabel was in tears. Waddles struggled against her tightened grip.

"Don't mention it Mr. Pines," responded Soos, with a slight bow of his fez. "Not to mention it's still technically Ford's house."

"Just accept my thanks," snapped Stan.

Down in the basement, Dipper couldn't help but remain dazzled by the various new paraphernalia littering the cabinets and walls of the laboratory.

"What's this thing?" Dipper said, holding up a small cube.

"That's a miniature nuclear battery I invented," responded Ford. "It'll last longer than you or your descendants will. Just don't throw it on the ground, that would be an awful mess for someone else to clean up."

Dipper gulped and put the battery back in its box.

"What about this?" Dipper asked holding up a strange-bird-claw-looking object. It was about the size of his head.

"That's the inner beak of a Kraken," responded Ford. "Did you know that Krakens have two mouths? That's just fascinating. One inside the other. You see, the big mouth latches onto the prey or boat, and then the miniature one pulls of pieces like bites on a pizza."

"That's terrifying."

"Then wait until you see the bigger beak!"

Ford dusted off a countertop in the back of the laboratory. On it stood four journals.

"What do you think?"

Dipper excitedly reached out and began to peruse the journal, barely able to take his eyes off of it.

"There's so much here!" Dipper flipped through the pages. "I haven't even heard of some of these in fairytales or mythological lore."

"Well," spoke Ford sincerely, "they are all indeed real and well encountered by my brother and I."

"Great Uncle Ford?" Dipper asked looking at the other three journals, "do you think that the mysteries of Gravity Falls are all said and done?" Dipper paced back and forth. "I mean, I wanted to come back and continue to search for the unbelievable, but what if you've catalogued everything there is to find?"

"If there's one thing I've learned about this town, Dipper, it's that there's always something new hiding around the corner."

"Okay great!" Dipper jubilantly revealed a journal from within his jacket. "I decided to take a page out of your book - no pun intended - and start my own journal when I returned."

Ford looked at the journal and made a hearty laugh.

"What's so funny?" asked Dipper.

"It's just, every time I look at you, I really do see a younger version of myself," Ford remarked. "You really are a worthy successor to my research."

"Ah yea..." Dipper scratched his head. "Sorry about turning down the offer."

"You don't need to apologize, Dipper," spoke Ford. "If there's one thing I've learned in my time exploring the Arctic, it's that two twins are better together than apart. I think you made the right decision to stay with your sister - for the time being that is. I do know one day you'll come around to my offer."

"Definitely! In due time." Dipper opened up the blank pages of his unfilled journal. "Let's hope I discover something new."

_Somewhere on the east coast of Virginia_

A man wearing a long jacket strolled across the beach, contemplating the nature of every seagull he passed. It was nighttime and the city for the most part was asleep, but this man was keen to the quiet walks one may take across the shore.

He looked out and saw a group of young kids, perhaps in their early teens, loudly playing out in the ocean. They gleefully shoved and beckoned each other into the sea and tested the resolve of the waves threatening to take them out unto their watery demise.

The man shuddered. As much as he enjoyed strolling, he never took to the ocean.

A small buzzing erupted past the right ear of the man, who swatted away at the source. Looks like he missed. The buzzing continued for some time before stopping completely.

He turned to find the bug frozen in the air as if held in place by the unforgiving hand of god.

"Oh no," he thought, "not again!"

He looked out to the kids playing, now each frozen, except for one, who pushed and pulled at his stoney friends to no avail.

"Hey, mister!" shouted the kid.

"Stay away from me!" demanded the man, backing up.

"What's going on?" The kid continued forward, ignoring the warning.

"Please, just don't come near me," he begged turning to run. But it was too late. He heard the screams of the child as the boy's feet burst into flames.

"I'm so sorry," the man murmured.

The boy erupted into red flame, burying his screams in the torrential purr of the fire. From his feet upwards the flames fully engulfed the boy and in mere seconds the boy's body had been reduced to ash.

The man held his hands to head. "Why, why?" he demanded.

A robotic voice whistled through the air: "Gravity falls. Downed."

"I don't know what that means!" shouted the man into the bellows of the atmosphere. There was no response.

The buzzing returned. Time once again moved forward.


End file.
